Of Scorched Skies and Sonnets
by HeyWhoTurnedOutTheLights
Summary: Another little angst fest that sits in somewhere in the Go Slowly universe. Because everybody gets a little angsty sometimes. Rose/Ten


Standard disclaimers apply. BBC owns all. Except excerpts from Sonnet 64 by William Shakespeare. I don't know who owns that.

Rose stepped forwards as she looked around her, eyes wide. Her gaze took in the bleak scene; scorched flashing skies, the bleached orange ground, skittering with dust the colour of old blood. Mountains arced high against the tumultuous clouds, shattered into stark relief intermittently with the sharp lightning the boiling air hummed with.

She felt the fine hairs along her arms and neck shiver delicately, as the static ran along her skin and she licked her suddenly dry lips. Her large eyes cast back towards the Doctor and she pulled her lip between her teeth. This is was one of _those_ places.

Every now and then The Doctor got a strange look in his eyes when he was setting the co-ordinates. Like some primal unbidden part of his subconscious wiggled through that thoroughly human facade he wore and pushed him into a dangerous zone. His eyes would darken, and his smile would waver on that line between manic and something more and Rose's heartbeat would flutter and increase, knowing that this place could be distinctly brilliant. Could most likely lead to running, would probably result in capture and escape, but mainly would reveal another tiny sliver of the many faceted alien that stood hand in hand with her.

It was this look that had brought her on board all those years ago, that dared her to give it all up, for him. This look that had gotten her through a loss of one friend, and the transition of that friendship into something.. well. Whatever it was.

Sometimes there was no running. At least not of a physical kind. Sometimes, even in this new shiny, happier body he felt that compulsion to test them, to see the extent of what they could stand. Of what he could stand. Sometimes he made her soul cry.

This barren planet would be one of _those_ places she reckoned as her body responded to the dark challenge in his eyes. Flooded with adrenaline, prepared to fight a battle of a different kind. There was no manic grin on his face as he stared at her, he was sombre as he tossed down his gauntlet.

He blinked and some of the intensity lessoned. He was reading her thoughts again, Rose thought, turning back to look at the landscape hiding the smile that tugged her lips. "Something happened here?"

She kept her tone light and questing, and failed to keep the flutter of excitement out of her voice. His fingers tightened briefly around hers and she could almost feel his grin as he started to speak.

"Yup, a war, well a couple of wars really." She looked back to see him incline his head slightly in acknowledgement of the correction. "An alien race who discovered Earth about 10000 years ago." He rolled his eyes sarcastically. "They were just mad about you."

Rose arched an eyebrow and snorted disdainfully. "Reckon there might have been a few more history books that mentioned that particular fact."

His eyes flashed with mirth and she could almost hear him thinking 'stupid ape'. If he'd been in his blue eyed, big eared incarnation he'd have definitely said it. "Oh Rose, they were a bit cleverer than that. And really they had very good taste." He nodded out at the barren desert, the lightening illuminating the jagged rocks that littered the landscape.

"Considering their world is now in bits, you mean?" Rose bit her lip softly, as he nodded again. He used their linked hands to nudge her gently forward, away from the T.A.R.D.I.S. and towards a huge tower of rock that rose out of the ground, blackened and scarred with battle and war. Against it's base she noticed the rock had been carved into, thin lines of letters standing out in pale relief against it's scorched crust.

"What happened here?" Rose felt her head pulse and her vision blurred just slightly as the translators worked on the language of the carving. The electricity in the air seemed to hum audibly and the place where their tangled fingers touch fizzed with it.

"Time War." He put all of his challenge into that statement. Because it was a statement. Not just a war. It had been everything.

"The Daleks." She emphasised her reply and the faint desperation in his returning laugh made her realise just how much he clung to her. To her faith in him.

After his laughter stopped he gestured his free hand to the carving in the stone. "This place used to be a City. They defended it against the Daleks for weeks. But the siege couldn't hold out, and the Daleks overran the city on the day I..." The Doctor broke off and cleared his suddenly husky voice. His hand clenched hers again tightly. "Read it."

Rose looked down at the inscription, frowning now the letters read in English. It looked familiar somehow. It wouldn't be school, she'd not been good at English at school.

She'd learnt a lot from the Doctor, and not all of it had been how to get Haunlisn slime out of Converse trainers. She scanned the words quickly and then inhaled quietly, her voice soft and poignant in the dead world.

"When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away."

Rose cleared her throat, feeling a sudden tightness there that she could not force away. She felt the Doctor drop his hand from hers and move away.

An image razed through her as her fingers slid from his and she saw a newly regenerated Doctor hair short, eyes ice blue and disturbingly raw, crouched against the still burning rock, fingers scraping against the soft molten surface. His eyes glowed with energy and his lips murmured his words incoherently as his hands struggled to define the crashing time-lines surging through his head.

She blinked her stinging eyes, mentally blaming the dry acrid air and continued.

"This thought is as a death, which cannot choose.

But weep to have that which it fears to lose"

She turned away from the carving and walked the short distance over to where The Doctor had moved. The massive rock stood at their backs, the raging storm ahead of them. In the sky, dancing in the rainless clouds a pair of what looked like sting-ray moved lazily in circles, sparking slightly with electricity. Rose bit her lip and forced herself not reach out for his hand as the power of this alien world shuddered through her. Forced herself not to cling to him as they shared this wonder, and he revealed another chink in his armour.

"'Sounds familiar. Like Shakespeare or sommat." She injected a casual note into her words, and she almost smiled at how well she nearly pulled it off.

"Sonnet 64. I told you they loved Earth."

His words fell out into the charged air, the veil behind which all the things they would never say danced and roiled in the space that stretched between them. A conversation that filled in the blanks with its complete absence of words.

It had been too close, the Beast. They had lost the T.A.R.D.I.S., and they had lost each other. And he was telling her now with his silence. He couldn't lose her.

The Doctor looked out over the empty world, and the teeming sky, everything so still even as the static winds whipped at their hair. He cleared his throat again, his voice ever so casual.

"How long are you going to stay with me."

Rose didn't even have to think about her response as her eyes searched for his. It fell from her lips, almost as if she was programmed with the word.

"Forever.


End file.
